5 Habits that Rapidly Damages Your Laptop

5 Bad Habits That Makes Your Laptop Quickly Damaged

A laptop or notebook is a simplified version of a desktop version. They providing the same features and nearly similar performances which you can bring anywhere.

But, unlike a desktop computer, mobile computers are generally more fragile and sensitive to the environment. Many users didn’t realize that the way they’re using their laptop accelerates its wear and tear process which basically makes it quickly damaged.

So, what bad habits you should avoid?

#1 Keep using it when overheating

Overheat is a phrase of the event when the machine gets too hot due to heavy activity. Playing video games, relentless video rendering process, or performing other excessive tasks causing the GPU and CPU to produce more heat within a small amount of time. The effects are pretty clear, you can feel unusual temperature around the exhaust of cooling system.

A various laptop designed to immediately shut down after the temperature reaching danger point (T-Junction). It will prevent premature damage to the CPU and GPU, also maintaining the thermal paste so it’s not dry out. The impact on HDD storage system even worse, overheating can lead to data corruption and impossible to recover anymore.

Tips: Always monitor the temperature and when it reaches a risky point, consider shutting down for a rest.

#2 Shaking laptop while it’s still running

Despite its status as a mobile device, laptop, particularly which using HDD as the main storage component is extremely sensitive to a harsh movement. The HDD consists of disk mechanism that always rotates during the operation. The Actuator Arm inside HDD floats over the magnetic platter about 10 nanometers to read/write data in a real-time.

It’s much like an airplane that flying just 10 cm above the ground. Imagine if there’s earthquake hitting the surface area and ‘touch’ the airplane hardly. The Actuator Arm should not physically contact with the platter or it will lead to lost some data in the process.

Tips: Sleep or Hibernate the laptop first before you move to another place or treat the laptop like you carrying sleeping baby. Moreover, if possible, replace the HDD with SSD system which is regarded as a shake-resistant storage.

#3 Lift up the laptop from the screen

The hinge that connects the screen from the main body was actually one of the most fragile components. It commonly made of a plastic with aluminum structures. However, the main problem is the graphics card cable which embedded inside it. The cable itself is relatively small, thin in diameter, and easily rip. Lift up the laptop from the screen would stretching the cable longer than it allowed, causing it torn apart and damage the display.

Once the cable ripped, you will see some display issues, such as color degradation, lower brightness level, freeze screen, partially dead screen, or even worse completely dead screen.

Tips: Make sure you hold the main body when carrying the laptop. The convertible and detachable laptop seems to have a robust hinge, hence, lifting up the laptop from the screen side probably won’t be bad.

#4 Stacking laptop with books or heavy stuff

Most laptop display comes with liquid display technology, like LED and LCD which susceptible to pressure. Average laptops have a thin structure inside the screen, making it more sensitive to a pressure from the back. Stacking heavy stuff when the laptop flipped down can hurt the display and leaks the liquid container.

Pressing it too hard can break the screen and induce dead pixel. Unfortunately, once those issues happen, there’s no way to fixing it by yourself. The only the reasonable thing to do is replacing old screen with a new one, which hardly hurting your wallet.

Tips: Never lay down anything on the laptop and pick a backpack with a sort of pillow layers for laptop compartment.

#5 Leaving laptop in the dust

Dust becomes a problem for the most computer devices, especially for those who have a fan-based cooling system. It sucks the fresh air from one side, reduces the CPU and GPU temperature, and release hot air to another side. This process leaving a dirt and dust on the grid, air tube, fan blade, and heatsink. Continuously exposing by dust will make fan less effective and eventually higher temperature on the main processing unit.

Furthermore, dust can rust the motherboard which is a main component of laptop. You can’t permanently remove the dust from the laptop since it was the part of air environment. However, dust probably won’t be the case for air-tight device or notebook that has no air cooling system.

Tips: Clean your laptop using a blower or air compressor regularly, about once every six months. Operating laptop inside the building considered to be the lower density of dust, hence, fewer of it penetrate your machine.

So, that is the 5 thing you should never do to your laptop if expect it will live longer. Despite you trying to prevent an accident as possible, laptop and such electronic stuff will eventually decaying and can’t be used anymore.

What do you think about those points above? Have you ever experienced laptop damage due to your own fault? Let me know in the comment, your story might be inspired other readers to not doing that.